OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday
ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe spent more than US $500000 (R3,5m) of his struggling country’s cash by taking a delegation of 47, including his wife and three children, on a trip to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, according to reports.
Quoting from official correspondence the independent Daily News claimed was leaked to it, the report said US $260000 was spent on air fares for the group, which included two cabinet ministers and the head of the country’s secret police.
Thirty members of the delegation were from the president’s office, including secret police agents.
Each member was given a daily foreign currency allowance of between US $150 and US $300 for the 14-day trip. The figures did not include accommodation and meals.
Mugabe, his family, ministers and senior officials are usually billeted in ultra-luxurious hotels. Travel industry sources said the delegation’s lodgings would have cost about another US $100000.
The travellers flew to Libya for a meeting of “the great Matahaba” – a Third World organisation set up by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – stopped over in Paris and went on to New York for the UN summit.
George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesman, refused to confirm the cost or size of the delegations, but questioned why the expenditure was not compared with “the impact on the Millennium Summit” of Mugabe’s address to the UN general assembly.
He also defended the inclusion of Mugabe’s family in the delegation, saying that the president spent “three-quarters of his time away from his family”.
United States president Bill Clinton travelled with his daughter, Chelsea, he said, and asked: “Was that a big story?”
The reports came as British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain said Mugabe had single-handedly undermined investor confidence in Africa by supporting land grabs in Zimbabwe, and had reinforced the view that little or no good could come out of Africa.
Hain is a vocal critic of the Zimbabwean leader, who backed often violent invasions of hundreds of white-owned farms by thousands of liberation war veterans ahead of June parliamentary elections.